Press Information October | November 2015 Animals A Brief Zoology of Cinema In the kingdom of cinema-creatures, the human animal sets the tone. It dominates the action, elevates itself above the other animals, delegates them to certain tasks, and never under any circumstance grants them access to the camera or the editing room. Thus, the cinema of ants (Phase IV), birds (Uccellacci e uccellini) and fish (Leviathan) always remains a cinema of humans – even though we often like to imagine how it would look the other way around (Planet of the Apes provides an uncomfortable glimpse). Alongside the zoo, where similar power structures prevail, the cinema is the visual medium that most clearly marks the accelerated transition of Western societies into the age of "vanishing nature." In the late 19th and 20th centuries, animals gradually disappeared from the contexts of everyday life and work (as they did, successively, from the wilderness) only to reappear as pets, as capitalist kitsch, in the form of big-game trophies, or for that matter, as zoo or movie animals. Cultural studies have adequately shown how in that process animals were utilized and treated: somewhat differently than in the food or clothing industries but under the same ideological conditions. This process of alienation in the modern age, as formulated by John Berger in his influential essay, "Why Look At Animals?", not only facilitated the increased systematic violence against animals, but also a new awareness of their suffering – from questions about their preservation and the dignity of animals to current debates about animal rights. Today, there is a hestitation with respect to animals, and the cinema (regardless of the strong anthropomorphism it has promoted in its depiction of animals) has no small role in this development. Because in the realm of photographic-cinematic images, the limits of the human viewpoint and of man’s centrality also become visible. As André Bazin has shown, the technology of cinema unfolds a world in which animals and things can exist independently from mankind – or on an equal basis with humans. Which is why, to this day, animals in movies have preserved their sting, their vitality, their sometimes darkly provocative, sometimes enlightening power. Even more so if one looks beyond the globally dominant genres of animal cinema and TV (such as the wildlife documentary), focusing instead on the exceptional richness of those fictional, essayistic, experimental mirror images that independently minded human animals have created by looking at other animals. This is the universe that our "Brief Zoology of Cinema" attempts to trace: animals and their images look back at us. And show us (as constantly threatened animals/images) what our society and our forms of living together are all about, including some of the boundaries and illusions of humanity as such. In other cases, they lead us (as constantly threatening animals/images) into the realm of myth, monsters and mutants. Their precarious status is also our own. From Étienne-Jules Marey’s proto-cinematic falling cat in the 1880s to Kelsey Goldych’s desktoproaming Trash Cat of 2015; from Godzilla to Balthazar; from Winsor McCay's animated mosquito to Aardman Animations’ Creature Comforts; from Cocteau's man-beast through Truffaut's wolf-boy to the human lab-animals in Alain Resnais’ Mon oncle d’Amerique; from the red fox in works by Powell/Pressburger, Arne Sucksdorff and Wes Anderson to the sperm whale as seen by John Huston and Chris Marker: these are only a few of the many diverse arcs, connections, and zoological as well as film historical affinities and contrasts that characterize the fabric of this retrospective. Its goal is not academic containment, but radical openness to a "crypto-zoological" wilderness: that of the cinema and its categories. As is triggers our curiosity, visual pleasure, reflexivity or sheer identification, it is often quite irrelevant whether the respective movie animal was trained or "caught in the act", invented or "real", effectively reproduced or just drawn with a few lines. All the more clearly, however, it can demonstrate to us how messy and impure the medium actually is: when the "documentary image" of a large herd of cows or buffalo stampedes across the screen in an elaborately constructed western – or when all roles in a studio-set narrative are played by live animals as in Jean Tourane's Une fée... pas comme les autres. Or the other way around, as in Battle at Kruger, when a shaky amateur camera on a safari records the most fantastically epic battle ever “staged” for a movie. With its 140 selected works, this exhibition is as comprehensive as possible within a representational space that will always remain immeasurable. Because the "Lives of Others" which are being evoked here – between horror fables and screwball comedy, studies of society and thrillers, jungle dramas and Direct Cinema – amount in some ways to an allegory of cinema itself: an apparatus (“biograph”) which, for many film theorists, has functioned as a kind of Ersatz animal in the modern age. A machine in which animism, animation and animality all collaborate to create artifacts: lasting works of human culture. There is, of course, a much simpler and more fundamental way to put it, as Ludwig Wittgenstein did: "In all great art exists a wild animal: tamed." Animals is this year’s joint retrospective of the Austrian Film Museum and the Viennale. We are grateful to the many individual and archival supporters of the program, in particular Elif Rongen and the EYE Film Institute, Amsterdam. A list of all films presented in the framework of the show can be found below. October 16 to November 30, 2015 Joseph Cornell Utopia Parkway: It is from this fittingly poetic-sounding address in Queens, NY, that the art of Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) emerged. Although he scarcely left New York during his lifetime, Cornell's work was strongly influenced by his interest in the old continent, astronomy and eras long past. Cornell was intrigued with all things distant; but instead of starting to travel he created his own cosmos: "This is a man who would look at the stars and dream about the mechanics of the universe." (Walter Hopps) Cornell is best known for his so-called boxes, in which he arranged various photos and objects. The proximity to Marcel Duchamp and his boîtes-en-valise is not only a conceptual, but also a personal kinship. As an autodidact, Cornell in the 1930s began to create his own work: the early collages were influenced by Surrealism but also by his own passionate collecting activity; soon the spectrum shifted towards objects and films. Cornell's relationship to film was highly ambivalent. The first screening (1936) of one of his films ended traumatically due to the indignant reaction of Salvador Dali, so that Cornell from that moment on only rarely and reluctantly agreed to show his films in public. Rose Hobart, his first and best known film, is dedicated to the actress of the same name. As in several later works which feature imagery of stars like Lauren Bacall and Hedy Lamarr, this early found-footage film 2 focuses primarily on Rose Hobart’s scenes from the 1931 ‘B’ movie East of Borneo. The result is an atmospherically condensed portrait, which communicates through simple but effective manipulation of the original context, creating a strong sense of irony and haunted-ness along the way. Cornell's film work is difficult to classify and even accurate dating is often difficult. The early collage-films from the 1930s were mostly completed much later, with the help of Lawrence Jordan, who was Cornell's assistant in the late 60s. In the mid-1950s, Stan Brakhage and Rudy Burckhardt acted as cinematographers under Cornell's direction – and the material generated by these wanderings through New York was incorporated into Cornell's works as well as their own films. Revision, recombination, delegation: these practices can be found throughout Cornell's entire oeuvre. Certain themes, motifs, and film fragments emerge in varying forms on several occasions, most clearly in the Children's Trilogy, a series of dark and very troubling "fairy tales." In Untitled (The Wool Collage) – the most recent discovery among the works he left behind – several sequences from other works also return in different shape. Annette Michelson refers to the parallels between the historical development of cinema and the biography of the artist: from a cinema of attractions to the narrative film to sound film; this genealogy is crystalized in Cornell's films, which often appear – intentionally – anachronistic while unfolding their enigmatic spell. A joint project of the Austrian Film Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The exhibition "Fernweh" at KHM, which shows Cornell's pictorial work for the first time in Austria, takes place from October 20, 2015 to January 10, 2016. The Film Museum's collection of Cornell's films will be augmented by loans from New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives. November 11 and 12, 2015 Manoel de Oliveira The Music of Vanished Things When Manoel de Oliveira died in the spring of this year, he was busy preparing a new project. What else would one be doing at the age of 106 besides simply making another film? Especially if one's career only got started at an age when most people are retiring... However, De Oliveira was an icon not only because of his age. His work is rich in connections to the history and literature of his Portuguese homeland, and it marked one of those unique and often baffling positions in modern cinema that the European film industry has tolerated less and less over the past 30 years. With his debut feature from 1942, De Oliveira was one of the first to represent this kind of cinema – and he will also have been one of the last. For Manoel De Oliveira, born in Porto in 1908, things happened a little differently than in most other directing careers. His first film, a silent study from 1931, was a thoughtful portrait of his hometown and its river (Douro, Faina Fluvial), but it took until his third feature in the early 1970s, O Passado e o Presente, that he began to regularly produce full-length works. In the intervening four decades, he was mainly an "amateur" – his central occupation was the family business while he 3 also cultivated hobbies such as auto racing. Added to this was the Salazar regime, which De Oliveira did not want to involve himself with more than was necessary. As a member of the elite, a dandy and a Catholic-conservative modernist, he found the local fascists suspect and reprehensible. Like the short film A Caça (1963), his first two features – the proto-neorealistic children's fable Aniki Bóbó (1942) and the colorful passion play Acto da Primavera (1963) – can be read as critiques of this state and its cinematic self-portraits. When he achieved his international breakthrough with the ironic adaptation of Camilo Castelo Branco's classic, Amor de Perdição (1979), Manoel de Oliveira was about 70 years old. Not long after, he began to be honored for his life's work – with the assumption that he would probably soon pass away. It seems that he, himself, didn’t expect to live very long, because by 1982 he had already created his cinematic will and testament, Visita ou Memórias e Confissões, that he insisted be shown only after his death (it premiered in May 2015 at the Cannes Film Festival). In the 1990s, however, he found a producer, Paulo Branco, who would transform De Oliveira into an international “institution”, enabling him to make a new movie almost every year – often featuring major stars such as Catherine Deneuve, Michel Piccoli, Marcello Mastroianni, Irene Papas and John Malkovich. And the director grew as possibilities grew around him. As his composer once said: For De Oliveira each film must offer something new – an experiment, a new beginning, an adventure. Which is also why his works cannot be reduced to a common denominator. In his films one can find mighty melodramas like Francisca or Vale Abraão, as well as cryptic-crafty comedies (Je rentre à la maison, Singularidades de uma Rapariga Loura), poetic essays (Porto da Minha Infância) and cinephile games (Belle toujours). The soundings of his own position in the world (Viagem ao Princípio do Mundo) are juxtaposed with musings on the fate of Portugal („Non“, ou A vã Glória de Mandar) – where Portugal for him represented the old world: Europe. He also loved to change style and intonation, mood and bearing, often right in the middle of a film. With De Oliveira one must always be prepared for anything, and should never assume where the journey might end. Manoel de Oliveira was an exception, a deviation beyond compare: always both old and young at the same time, a citizen of a lost era and of one yet to come. "In life, a loss always means a new beginning. Art is then no more than the 'music of vanished things.'" The homage to Manoel de Oliveira is a joint venture between the Film Museum and the Viennale and has been organized with the generous support of the Cinemateca Portuguesa. Filmmaker Pedro Costa was invited by the Viennale to select films from De Oliveira's vast oeuvre. After the festival, these are also shown at the Film Museum, complimented by several additional works. In total, the exhibition will screen 25 short and feature-length films. On November 13 and 14, José Manuel Costa, Director of the Cinemateca Portuguesa, will speak at the Filmmuseum, discussing and introducing several films by De Oliveira. November 13 to 30, 2015 4 In person Clemens von Wedemeyer The film works and installations by Clemens von Wedemeyer, born in Göttingen in 1974, are contemporary in the best sense of the word: insistent and curious, they seek places where the present becomes visible and tangible. At the same time, they conjure up images which reflect on their own origin and a history of visual media. Silberhöhe measures the juxtaposition of a worker's flat and a new development in Halle an der Saale alongside the setting of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse. Starting from the monastery at Breitenau, the feature-length film Muster alternates between three different time periods and in the process brings to light the historic sediments of the place as well as showing how its design developed in the years 1945, 1970 and 2012. Von Wedemeyer, who in 2006 won the German competition at the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and who has also had work featured at Documenta and various Biennials, is primarily recognized in the field of visual art. But his oeuvre exhibits an intense proximity to the cinema that reaches far beyond mere referrences. His works immerse themselves deeply in film history and thoroughly investigate aesthetic figures of cinema: the cinematic construction of "point of view" in Von Gegenüber enables a cartography of the Münster train station square, while Found Footage is defined by the precise examination of film fragments of foreign cultures, people and places. In Otjesd and Procession, political scenarios are analyzed through long sequence shots. Procession is also part of the tri-part project, The Cast, which represents the most condensed instance of this approach. Images of a sculpture workshop at Cinecittà are interwoven with a found-footage work about statues in movies and about the revolt of extras during the filming of Ben Hur: the reality depicted in this film has its own origin in cinema. With three programs, the Film Museum presents a cross-section of the artist's work for the first time in Austria. Clemens von Wedemeyer, who is currently working on his latest project in Vienna, will be present for all screenings. The series is being organized in the framework of the 2015 Vienna Art Week. November 19 and 20, 2015 For more information and photos, please visit www.filmmuseum.at or contact: Alessandra Thiele, [email protected], phone 43-1-533 70 54 ext. 22 Eszter Kondor, [email protected], phone 43-1-533 70 54 ext. 12 5 Animals. List of Selected Works Clash of the Wolves 1925, Noel M. Smith Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness 1927, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack Tarzan the Ape Man 1932, W.S. Van Dyke King Kong 1933, Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack Bringing Up Baby 1938, Howard Hawks + Gare! Les Lions! (Achtung! Löwen!) 1912, Lux Bambi 1942, David Hand / Disney + The Private Life of a Cat 1945/46, Alexander Hammid & Maya Deren Lassie Come Home 1943, Fred M. Wilcox La Belle et la bête 1946, Jean Cocteau + Red Hot Riding Hood 1943, Tex Avery Red River 1948, Howard Hawks Gone to Earth 1950, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger Umberto D. 1952, Vittorio De Sica + Cani dietro le sbarre 1955, Gillo Pontecorvo Mogambo 1953, John Ford + Ein Fabeltier fliegt nach Deutschland 1954, Michael Grzimek Gojira (Godzilla) 1954, Ishiro Honda + Mysteries of The Deep 1959, Ben Sharpsteen / Disney Moby Dick 1956, John Huston + Vive la baleine 1972, Chris Marker & Mario Ruspoli Good-bye, My Lady 1956, William A. Wellman The Last Hunt 1956, Richard Brooks + Chasse aux phoques dans la mer de la Tasmanie (Seehundjagd in Tasmanien) 1910, Pathé Une fée... pas comme les autres 1957, Jean Tourane India, Matri Bhumi 1957-59, Roberto Rossellini + Pastori di Orgosolo 1958, Vittorio De Seta Koiya koi nasuna koi (The Mad Fox) 1962, Tomu Uchida The Birds 1963, Alfred Hitchcock + Glimpses of Bird Life 1910, Oliver Pike Vidas secas (Trockenes Leben) 1963, Nelson Pereira dos Santos Au hasard Balthazar 1966, Robert Bresson Uccellacci e uccellini (Große Vögel – kleine Vögel) 1966, Pier Paolo Pasolini + De Vogeltjesvanger (Der Vögleinfänger) 1925, N.V. Orion Filmfabriek Planet of the Apes 1968, Franklin J. Schaffner + Rat Life and Diet in North America 1968, Joyce Wieland Kes 1969, Ken Loach Gaav (Die Kuh) 1969, Dariush Mehrjui L’Enfant sauvage 1970, Francois Truffaut Le Cochon 1970, Jean Eustache & J.-M. Barjol + Le Sang des bètes 1949, Georges Franju + Bataille sur le grand fleuve 1951, Jean Rouch Phase IV 1974, Saul Bass + La Peine du talion 1906, Gaston Velle + La Chenille de la carotte 1911, Pathé Vase de noces 1974, Thierry Zeno + De poes (Die Katze) 1968, Johan van der Keuken Primate 1974, Frederick Wiseman + Grigio 1957, Ermanno Olmi & Pier Paolo Pasolini Koko, le gorille qui parle / Koko, a Talking Gorilla 1978, Barbet Schroeder + Last Lost 1996, Eve Heller Agraharathil Kazhuthai (Ein Esel im Brahmanen-Dorf) 1978, John Abraham + The Corridor 2010, Sarah Vanagt Mon oncle d’Amerique 1980, Alain Resnais + L'Hippocampe, ou 'Cheval marin' 1935, Jean Painlevé The Animals Film 1981, Victor Schonfeld & Myriam Alaux + Das boxende Känguruh 1895, Max Skladanowsky White Dog 1982, Samuel Fuller + Sid 1998, Jeffrey Scher A Zed & Two Noughts 1985, Peter Greenaway + Tiere ohne Feind und Furcht 1953, Michael Grzimek I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like 1986, Bill Viola + Le Cinéma lent et les movements rapides des animaux 1915, Pathé 6 The Fly 1986, David Cronenberg + Cheese Mites 1903, Charles Urban + The Unclean World 1903, Percy Stow + The Strength and Agility of Insects 1911, Percy Smith + Les Mouches 1913, Eclipse Cane Toads: An Unnatural History 1988, Mark Lewis Tierische Liebe 1995, Ulrich Seidl + Madame Babylas aime les animaux 1911, Alfred Machin Babe: Pig in the City 1998, George Miller Best in Show 2000, Christopher Guest + Queer Pets 1912, Percy Smith Sen to Chichiro no kamikakushi (Chihiros Reise ins Zauberland) 2001, Hayao Miyazaki Grizzly Man 2005, Werner Herzog Fantastic Mr. Fox 2009, Wes Anderson + En kluven värld (Eine gespaltene Welt) 1948, Arne Sucksdorff Leviathan 2012, Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel + Visvangst met aalscholvers in Nederlands Indië (Fischfang mit Kormoranen) 1925 + Pescherecci 1958, Vittorio De Seta SHORT FILM PROGRAM 1: TIER- UND MENSCHENGÄRTEN Plackerei Freude Leid oder Licht und Schatten auf der Farm des Zirkus Bostock 1911 Creature Comforts 1989, Nick Park The New Architecture of the London Zoo 1936/37, László Moholy-Nagy Carousel – Animal Opera ca. 1938, Joseph Cornell Zoo 1962, Bert Haanstra Microcultural Incidents at 10 Zoos 1971, Ray L. Birdwhistell Nashörner 1987, Karl Kels La Nuit tombe sur la ménagerie 2010, Nicolas Philibert SHORT FILM PROGRAM 2: ANIMALI │ CRIMINALI Das Erbe 1935, Cartl Hartmann / NSDAP Electrocuting an Elephant 1903, Edison Co. Chasse à la panthère 1909, Alfred Machin Unsere Afrikareise 1961-66, Peter Kubelka Der letzte Schrei des Dschungels [Trailer for Ultime grida dalla savana] 1975 Animali criminali 1994, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi Fütterung von Riesenschlangen 1911, Komet-Film Cat Fishin’ 1947, William Hanna & Joseph Barbera Gallodrome 1989, Romuald Karmakar Bully for Bugs 1953, Chuck Jones Battle at Kruger 2004/07, David Budzinski & Jason Schlosberg SHORT FILM PROGRAM 3: DER GESANG DER TIERE Gus Visser and His Singing Duck 1925, Theodor Case Le Vampire 1939-45, Jean Painlevé Hurdy-Gurdy Hare 1950, Robert McKimson One Froggy Evening 1955, Chuck Jones Berlin Horse 1970, Malcolm Le Grice Vremena goda (Die Jahreszeiten) 1975, Artavazd Pelešjan Boundin' 2003, Bud Luckey SLON Tango 1993, Chris Marker C’mon Babe (Danke schön) 1988, Sharon Sandusky Careless Reef Part 4: Marsa Abu Galawa 2004, Gerard Holthuis Convulsion (Pirkus) 1998, Chen Sheinberg SHORT FILM PROGRAM 4: ANIMATED ANIMALS Mest’ kinematograficheskogo operatora (Die Rache des Kameramanns) 1911/12, Ladislas Starewitch How a Mosquito Operates 1912, Winsor McCay Africa Before Dark 1928, Walt Disney Slaphappy Lion 1947, Tex Avery L‘Anitra famosa 1954 + Smart Export 1959, Jószef Misik / Geesink Studio By Word of Mouse 1954, Fritz Freleng Whoa, Be-Gone! 1958, Chuck Jones Yozhik v tumane (Igel im Nebel) 1975, Jurij Norstein Creature Comforts 1989, Nick Park 7 For the Birds 2000, Ralph Eggleston Shadow Cuts 2010, Martin Arnold SHORT FILM PROGRAM 5: HUND UND KATZ UND GROMIT – 130 JAHRE KINO La Chronophotographie sur pellicule / La Chute du chat 1888-94, Étienne-Jules Marey RaumZeitHund 2010, Nikolaus Eckhard Meissner Porzellan! Lebende Skulpturen der Diodattis im Berliner Wintergarten 1912-14, Gaumont Dejeuner du chat 1896, Cinématographe Lumière Famille de jeunes chiens 1912, Gaumont Les Chiens savants 1909, Pathé Dog Factory 1904, Edwin S. Porter A Little Hero 1913, George Nichols / Keystone King-Size Canary 1947, Tex Avery Cat’s Cradle 1959, Stan Brakhage Spelling Lesson + Dog Duet 1973-76, William Wegman Dog Baseball 1986, William Wegman A Close Shave 1995, Nick Park Nine Lives: The Eternal Moment of Now 2001, Jay Rosenblatt Chat écoutant la musique 1990, Chris Marker Trash Cat 2015, Kelsey Goldych 8
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